8800 - wait and see...

[eventerke]

Just some FYI for anyone who is considering an 8800 purchase.

I picked up an 8800GTS on an eVGA trade-up for my 7900GTO, since the
trade-up window was going to close soon.

First off, you can crank some unbelievable levels of AA and AF at high
res on this thing. The Anandtech article was not understating what a
big jump forward this is (on par with the ATI 9700 release).

Unfortunately this is at huge cost in compatibility. Not unexpected,
but there are some major issues with fairly popular games. Some brand
cards cannot even load the latest drivers. My eVGA could use the
97.44's direct from nVidia, but the stupid nTune app refuses to
install. I haven't tested on all my games, but Halo is the first one
with game-killing artifacts I've run into. I may do some extensive
testing as I've got a ton of different games. I just got the card, so
all I've played is Prey, COD2, rFactor, GTR2, RBR, F.E.A.R., Quake 4,
and Halo. Only spent any length of time in GTR2, and Halo was the only
one with immediate, unplayable bugs.

Lots of little annoying quirks in the driver and control panel, too.
Could only get the old CP through a registry hack, and I had to use the
reforce util to get refresh rates to work properly in OpenGL.

I'm trying to find good forum info - nZone has a thread tracking the
current bugs. Luckily if I have anything I'm desperate to play I have
an ATI1600 in my "office tasks" PC, and a 6800Ultra in my media box
hooked to the TV.

If people are genuinely interested I'll update this thread with
anything I run into compatibility-wise.

Kendt

 

[Trimble Bracegirdle]

"If people are genuinely interested I'll update this thread with
anything I run into compatibility-wise">>>
Yes please and thanks..
I have my eye on the 8800 and this makes for usefull warning.
In the UK the Albatron brand model GTS is the lowest price at just under
£300 ($580 USD) with other same spec. brands up to £350.
Any different between the brands ??...GTX can be got for just over £400 .

I'd be very surpised if there are any unsolvable problems with any existing
games..I mean if it runs one DX9 (or 8) prog it will run another ?
Wonder how it copes with (say) DAGGERFALL or DESCENT
Dos game things. Does it offer all the standed Text DOS modes ?
Mouse
@@@

 

[rms]

I have my eye on the 8800 and this makes for usefull warning.

Also be aware that AMD/ATI are not too far away from releasing the R600,
and have stated in their PR/hype that it should easily match the 8800. Who
knows when it'll be out, within a few months I'd imagine.

rms

 

[First of One]

Unfortunately this is at huge cost in compatibility. Not unexpected,
but there are some major issues with fairly popular games. Some brand
cards cannot even load the latest drivers. My eVGA could use the
97.44's direct from nVidia, but the stupid nTune app refuses to
install.

Any time you have a separate piece of software released independently from
the core drivers, you will be constantly dogged with version mismatch and
other conflicts. Look at ATi's MMC, quite a mess. Then again, why do you
need nTune? Overclocking shouldn't be necessary for another year or so with
this card.

I'm trying to find good forum info - nZone has a thread tracking the
current bugs. Luckily if I have anything I'm desperate to play I have
an ATI1600 in my "office tasks" PC, and a 6800Ultra in my media box
hooked to the TV.

<Sigh> Having to constantly fall back on a secondary box to play games that
your new $600 toy can't run, is unacceptable. Interestingly, I don't recall
the Radeon 9700 having as many issues at launch. In fact, it was a big
improvement in compatibility compared to the 8500 it superceded.

 

[eventerke]

Any time you have a separate piece of software released independently from
the core drivers, you will be constantly dogged with version mismatch and
other conflicts. Look at ATi's MMC, quite a mess. Then again, why do you
need nTune? Overclocking shouldn't be necessary for another year or so with
this card.

I didn't *need* nTune - I just started there as the nVidia CP directs
you to the web site to get OC/temp options added to the control panel.
ATItool/the old CP ended up being the solution for me. OC'ing may not
be necessary, but I like to see what the card can do, and where I'm
CPU/GPU limited. I saw a recent test where the GTS responds well (in
FPS terms) to OC'ing, while the GTX is the card that is so fast that
nothing can feed it enough bits to choke it.

<Sigh> Having to constantly fall back on a secondary box to play games that
your new $600 toy can't run, is unacceptable. Interestingly, I don't recall
the Radeon 9700 having as many issues at launch. In fact, it was a big
improvement in compatibility compared to the 8500 it superceded.

Well, I keep a Win98SE machine with a Voodoo5 to fall back on too .
I've gotta say I agree with you - that's why I posted. And I didn't
pay $600, then I'd be *really* pissed . There really is no game that
will make me jump through a million hoops to make it work - if I get
that frustrated I'll just shut the PC off and go play Guitar Hero or
something...

Kendt

 

[John Lewis]

Just some FYI for anyone who is considering an 8800 purchase.

I picked up an 8800GTS on an eVGA trade-up for my 7900GTO, since the
trade-up window was going to close soon.

First off, you can crank some unbelievable levels of AA and AF at high
res on this thing. The Anandtech article was not understating what a
big jump forward this is (on par with the ATI 9700 release).

Unfortunately this is at huge cost in compatibility. Not unexpected,
but there are some major issues with fairly popular games. Some brand
cards cannot even load the latest drivers. My eVGA could use the
97.44's direct from nVidia, but the stupid nTune app refuses to
install. I haven't tested on all my games, but Halo is the first one
with game-killing artifacts I've run into. I may do some extensive
testing as I've got a ton of different games. I just got the card, so
all I've played is Prey, COD2, rFactor, GTR2, RBR, F.E.A.R., Quake 4,
and Halo. Only spent any length of time in GTR2, and Halo was the only
one with immediate, unplayable bugs.

Lots of little annoying quirks in the driver and control panel, too.
Could only get the old CP through a registry hack, and I had to use the
reforce util to get refresh rates to work properly in OpenGL.

I'm trying to find good forum info - nZone has a thread tracking the
current bugs. Luckily if I have anything I'm desperate to play I have
an ATI1600 in my "office tasks" PC, and a 6800Ultra in my media box
hooked to the TV.

If people are genuinely interested I'll update this thread with
anything I run into compatibility-wise.

Kendt

Usual "early-adopter" joys. No news here. The 8800 is a revolutionary
departure from previous nVidia GPU architectures. Takes a while to
mature the drivers. ATi have had similar driver maturity issues in the
past with their various architecture changes. Initially poor support
for xcurrent and legacy games. Thanks for being a beta -tester and for
helping to defray the development-cost.

John Lewis

 

[eventerke]

Usual "early-adopter" joys. No news here. The 8800 is a revolutionary
departure from previous nVidia GPU architectures. Takes a while to
mature the drivers. ATi have had similar driver maturity issues in the
past with their various architecture changes. Initially poor support
for xcurrent and legacy games. Thanks for being a beta -tester and for
helping to defray the development-cost.

You're welcome ...

Honestly, if it wasn't for the trade-up program, and I had something
faster than a 7900GTO before hand I wouldn't have touched either an ATI
or nVidia card so soon after launch.

Kendt

 

[Wax]

If people are genuinely interested I'll update this thread with
anything I run into compatibility-wise.

Kendt

Thanks for posting, it is appreciated. This info, while not surprising,
still provides welcome feedback. I'll give things a year before buying a
DirectX 10 card of any sort.

 

[John Lewis]

Any time you have a separate piece of software released independently from
the core drivers, you will be constantly dogged with version mismatch and
other conflicts. Look at ATi's MMC, quite a mess. Then again, why do you
need nTune? Overclocking shouldn't be necessary for another year or so with
this card.


<Sigh> Having to constantly fall back on a secondary box to play games that
your new $600 toy can't run, is unacceptable. Interestingly, I don't recall
the Radeon 9700 having as many issues at launch.

Your memory is very short. There were some very big initial hiccups.

And ATi (er, AMD) are still lagging in OpenGL and Linux driver
support.

When a new GPU architecture is released, it is a very wise (and
money-saving) idea to wait six months for any hardware glitches to be
rectified, the MB and video card BIOS's to be stable and the
video-card drivers to be fully mature. Nice to have all the rich
suckers (er, early-adopters) helping straighten out all the kinks and
finance the bulk of the development cost.

John Lewis

 

[Michael W. Ryder]

Your memory is very short. There were some very big initial hiccups.

What hiccups are you talking about? The only one I knew of was an issue
with some of the early cards and some of the motherboards. I bought one
shortly after they came out and it has Never had any issues with
anything I have used it on. It is still going strong. The only problem
I ever had with the card was the heat output in my old case required a
separate fan to exhaust the fan's heat out the back.

And ATi (er, AMD) are still lagging in OpenGL and Linux driver
support.

When a new GPU architecture is released, it is a very wise (and
money-saving) idea to wait six months for any hardware glitches to be
rectified, the MB and video card BIOS's to be stable and the
video-card drivers to be fully mature. Nice to have all the rich
suckers (er, early-adopters) helping straighten out all the kinks and
finance the bulk of the development cost.

I bought my 9700 Pro on release as I was playing Morrowind and my 7500
was not enough for the game. I didn't feel like spending $200 or more
for another video card only to replace it in a few months.

 

[Claude Leclerc]

I wanted all the GPU power I could get because I'm using TH2G. (3840x1024
resolution) so I bought a EVGA8800GTX.
ATI is not an option here because it doesn't support these resolution for
reasons unknown to me.

The upgrade was surprisingly mostly flawless. I had some Control Panel
quirks at the beginning but I changed card without re-installing drivers.
After a re-install, nTune and the CP are working great. (Without the Classic
CP but I can live with that)

For racing sim this has been a great upgrade (specially for GTL which I can
now run at 3840x1024 even on night races with great fps). GTL, GTR, GTR2,
Netkar, rFactor, RACE all run flawlessly.
On my older games, some DOS, some Win95, some newer ones, no problem either.

Reading the release note from the latest drivers, I'm lucky enough not to
play the games that have some problems, some being subtle. People looking
for a 8800 upgrade should read it before making a move.

Vista and DX10 will tell me, in a year or so, if I made a good move but for
the time being it's a pricey but great upgrade for my sim racing "needs"!

 

[eventerke]

I wanted all the GPU power I could get because I'm using TH2G. (3840x1024
resolution) so I bought a EVGA8800GTX.
ATI is not an option here because it doesn't support these resolution for
reasons unknown to me.

The upgrade was surprisingly mostly flawless. I had some Control Panel
quirks at the beginning but I changed card without re-installing drivers.
After a re-install, nTune and the CP are working great. (Without the Classic
CP but I can live with that)

For racing sim this has been a great upgrade (specially for GTL which I can
now run at 3840x1024 even on night races with great fps). GTL, GTR, GTR2,
Netkar, rFactor, RACE all run flawlessly.
On my older games, some DOS, some Win95, some newer ones, no problem either.

[snip]

What level of AA/AF are you able to run? I've got a 21" CRT now at
1600x1200 (max res) and I can comfortably run 8xQAA/16xAF (although
back of the grid at night in GTR2 is slow).
I'm considering getting a large LCD or small 1080p TV to game on.

Also, so far I haven't found the need to drop the D3D "frames rendered
ahead" from 3 to 0 to get rid of that annoying stutter ISI sims seem to
get. Are you seeing the same thing?

Thanks,
Kendt.

 

[Claude Leclerc]

I want fairly high fps, especially online, so I don't go over 4x/4x in most
sims. (For GTR2/GTL with night racing I use 2xAA or none) I would need a 2nd
GTX in SLI to be able to raise AA/AF at the resolution I use. That's a lot
of $$$ (Another GTX and a 850W+ P/S).

I luckily don't have any stutters in rFactor and other ISI based sims. I use
nVidia drivers default except for AA/AF, no OC.

 

[Larry]

I run 4AA, 16AF in everything on my 21" widescreen Gateway. 1680X1050X32.

I have everything maxed out in all the racing games I run.

Oh, that's on a 4800x2 and a GeForce 7800GTX.

8x AA is quite runable, but the fps drops to around 50 in NR2003, and I
prefer to keep it up over 100. Personally, I think the controls are more
responsive at uber-high fps.

-Larry

 

[Mr.E Solved!]

I didn't feel like spending $200 or more
for another video card only to replace it in a few months.

Silly, that's what high end PC gaming is all about, constant hardware
improvements to take advantage of more sophisticated software algorithms.

And you are slightly off on your math, it's not $200 every few months,
for the real enthusiast it's $400 (just for the video card) every 6-9
months. Rich buyers move the old equipment like hand-me-downs through
the PC chain. More budget minded folk sell the still useful gear to
defray the cost of new gear, which can be a significant percentage of
the cost.

That methodology affords great performance and avoids all the pitfalls
of early adoption. I look forward to my Geforce 8 series purchase in
about three months when:

1) The chipset refresh will be announced/available
2) Many more choices of card-HSF-system board to suit my needs
3) Many Driver revisions will have occurred
4) Killer DX10 Apps/Games will be available
5) Prices have reached the $400 mark

Tick tock tick tock.

 

[Michael W. Ryder]

Silly, that's what high end PC gaming is all about, constant hardware
improvements to take advantage of more sophisticated software algorithms.

And you are slightly off on your math, it's not $200 every few months,
for the real enthusiast it's $400 (just for the video card) every 6-9
months. Rich buyers move the old equipment like hand-me-downs through
the PC chain. More budget minded folk sell the still useful gear to
defray the cost of new gear, which can be a significant percentage of
the cost.

Well I spent $400 to buy the 9700 Pro when it first came out rather than
waiting the 6 months for the new architecture to "stabilize". There was
no competition for the card for over a year. Sometimes you get lucky.

 

[First of One]

Your memory is very short. There were some very big initial hiccups.

My memory goes back to the ATi 3D Rage and Matrox Millenium days. The
Radeon 9700 was not hard-launched; the reviewers had a chance to thoroughly
abuse the cards before they became available in retail. The initial problems
were not on the same order of magnitude as the 8800 has now. All in all the
9700 owners had a good experience out of the box, and didn't have to upgrade
again for 2-3 years - for once the early adopters didn't lose much, and it
may not get repeated again.

And ATi (er, AMD) are still lagging in OpenGL and Linux driver
support.

ATi's OpenGL support caught up with nVidia a long time ago, since around the
time of the Radeon 9x00 cards. In Doom 3, for example, the 9800 was equal or
faster than the FX5900, despite the latter's optimizations for stencil
operations (having so-called "32 x 0" pipelines). Nowadays there aren't that
many demanding OpenGL titles. Anand's benchmarks in Prey shows the X1950XTX
to be 24% faster than the 7900GTX and only 12% slower than the 8800GTS.
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2870&p=26

For what it's worth, ATi has better driver support for Mac OS X and
marginally better support for NetBSD (remember that silly petition?).
Whether Linux support is symbolically more important is open to debate.
Apparently ATi's stance is to dedicate manpower commensurate with OS
marketshare. This ultimately means one coder (out of the whole team) spends
half a day every week developing Linux drivers. For a non-dual-booting
Windows user (all 95% of the market), this doesn't really matter.

When a new GPU architecture is released, it is a very wise (and
money-saving) idea to wait six months for any hardware glitches to be
rectified, the MB and video card BIOS's to be stable and the
video-card drivers to be fully mature. Nice to have all the rich
suckers (er, early-adopters) helping straighten out all the kinks and
finance the bulk of the development cost.

This is usually good advice, simply because in six months nVidia may come up
with something like a 8900, like it had always done (GF3 Ti, FX5900, GF7900
etc.). Also remember DX10.1 is planned for the first half of 2008.

 

[HockeyTownUSA]

Just some FYI for anyone who is considering an 8800 purchase.

I picked up an 8800GTS on an eVGA trade-up for my 7900GTO, since the
trade-up window was going to close soon.

First off, you can crank some unbelievable levels of AA and AF at high
res on this thing. The Anandtech article was not understating what a
big jump forward this is (on par with the ATI 9700 release).

Unfortunately this is at huge cost in compatibility. Not unexpected,
but there are some major issues with fairly popular games. Some brand
cards cannot even load the latest drivers. My eVGA could use the
97.44's direct from nVidia, but the stupid nTune app refuses to
install. I haven't tested on all my games, but Halo is the first one
with game-killing artifacts I've run into. I may do some extensive
testing as I've got a ton of different games. I just got the card, so
all I've played is Prey, COD2, rFactor, GTR2, RBR, F.E.A.R., Quake 4,
and Halo. Only spent any length of time in GTR2, and Halo was the only
one with immediate, unplayable bugs.

Lots of little annoying quirks in the driver and control panel, too.
Could only get the old CP through a registry hack, and I had to use the
reforce util to get refresh rates to work properly in OpenGL.

I'm trying to find good forum info - nZone has a thread tracking the
current bugs. Luckily if I have anything I'm desperate to play I have
an ATI1600 in my "office tasks" PC, and a 6800Ultra in my media box
hooked to the TV.

If people are genuinely interested I'll update this thread with
anything I run into compatibility-wise.

Kendt

While there have always been "fixes" and work-arounds to DOS or Win9x games
in WinXP , I believe with Vista and DirectX 10 there will turly be a need
for a backwards compatible box. Too many significant differences to make a
compatible system.

I recently built a Shuttle SN41G2 box with Sempron 2400+, 1GB RAM, 6800XT
video, 80GB HD to run WinXP and Win98/DOS games. This may just have to work
for me through the next many years until I no longer care to play those
"older" games any more. Granted my up-to-date gaming box is much more
powerful, but usually sell off the PC as a whole, or in parts, every year or
two to fund my next gaming PC upgrade.

It's unfortunate, but reality that I believe we must face with Windows Vista
and DirectX 10, as far as gaming is concerned.

 

[DRS]

[...]

It's unfortunate, but reality that I believe we must face with
Windows Vista and DirectX 10, as far as gaming is concerned.

Google DirectX 9L.

 

[HockeyTownUSA]

[...]

It's unfortunate, but reality that I believe we must face with
Windows Vista and DirectX 10, as far as gaming is concerned.

Google DirectX 9L.

I know that DirectX 9L is for "backwards" Vista compatibility with DX9 and
prior games, but who knows what compatability issues that will bring?